As Long as You Are Facing God

Michael McGough’s commentary (“Grappling With Catholic Feng Shui,” May 9) is the latest version of what’s become a treasured fairy tale among conservative Catholics: that all the troubles and challenges confronting the church can be blamed on the openness of Vatican II. In this little bit of make-believe, Catholics worldwide were frightened by the scary forest of freedoms that evolved from that period -- so we all left the church and now drift helplessly, searching for the path back to Grandma’s house.

My reality is very different. I grew up in a working-class Italian parish in the Bronx that got excited by and caught up in Vatican II. Suddenly, our church and school were filled with idealistic young priests and nuns drawn to the religious life, to helping the poor, by the promise of change among Catholics.

Much of that got washed away, but not because as an altar boy I had to give up my Latin for English, and not because the altar got switched around to face the congregation. Instead, that promise of change was stamped down by an anti-Vatican II backlash that included a ban on contraception -- and the cutoff of any discussion about married priests and a bigger church role for women. Many of those young priests and nuns of my childhood in the 1960s left religious life during the ‘70s and ‘80s -- angry and disappointed by the broken promises coming from Rome. Many people in the pews did the same.

It’s a shame that conservatives like McGough -- and, more urgently, Pope Benedict XVI -- don’t understand this and instead concoct their grim little fairy tale against freedom. That’s the real wolf-at-the-door for disillusioned American Catholics.

Joe Ferullo

Studio City

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Should the altar be turned around? A religious ritual is very important. Consequently, the way it is conducted is very important. I grew up with the Latin Mass; I was in high school before it changed, and I still miss it to this day. But I attend Mass regularly, often, and I don’t see God “less and less” in the picture. I see God more and more in the picture as the laity, which is called by the Roman Catholic Church “a priestly people,” fulfills its role(s) in the Mass.

“The Kingdom of God is among you,” Jesus says (Luke 17:20-21). God, by God’s very nature, cannot be “less and less in the picture.” In any picture. If we don’t see God in the picture, it’s only our perception and recognition of God that have dimmed.

Barbara Robinson

Irvine